Florida officials imposed a one-year moratorium on...

Florida officials imposed a one-year moratorium on executions after a fire started during Pedro Medina's electrocution on March 25, 1997. Flames and smoke rose from a mask covering his head after the electric current was turned on in the 74-year-old electric chair. An autopsy report said Medina died instantly and had not suffered any pain from the fire, blamed on conducting sponges in the chair's headpiece. But on January 19, in the appeal made by the death row inmate Eduardo Lopez, the Florida Supreme Court voted 4-3 that continued use of the electric chair would not violate the Constitution's ban on cruel and unusual punishment. The majority of the justices recommended that the state change its method of execution to lethal injection. Legislation was passed in 1998 providing that the state's method of execution would be changed to lethal injection if the electric chair was found unconstitutional.